Quebec gets a “thumbs up”

There aren’t a lot of opportunities to be proud of your government these days. As a beleaguered young(ish) male anxious to blame others for his failures, I see every incompetent bureaucratic farce (of which there really are too many to name) and forget that occasionally, they get something right. In this case, it was refusing the appeal of two unnamed parents who wanted their children pulled from a religious diversity class. Claiming that the education of their young ones would crumble their fragile belief structure (they called it “protecting their religious freedom”, a common tactic of today’s fundamentalists), the Catholic parents managed to make it all the way to the Quebec Supreme Court before someone finally called them on their shit: religious freedom has nothing to do with isolating people from other world views. Period.

With everyone’s heads screwed back on, these kids have a chance of actually learning something that isn’t founded on principles set out by a bunch of weird dudes dressed in overly elaborate robes. Who knows, maybe these kids have a chance in a province where 71% of the population believes in Evolution (compared to the national average of 59%).